Chernobyl, Life, And Other Disasters by Yevgenia Nayberg

It’s so rare to find a memoirist whose art is as engaging as her prose, but Yevgenia Nayberg truly is phenomenal in both fields. You can very much tell that she’s a trained artist, even before she goes into the details of her academic beginnings in this arresting memoir of growing up in Kyiv in the 1980s.

Genya knows from the age of five that she wants to be an artist, just like her animator mother. After she turns eleven, she’s going to apply to the same prestigious art school that her mother went to. Her mother warns her that the school’s unofficial quota system — where Jews can only ever make up 1% of the student body — means that Genya will have to work at least twice as hard as everyone else to get in. When Genya realizes that this mostly means private art classes with two other students whose company she enjoys tho, it becomes even less of a burden than anticipated. But when strange news comes out of nearby Chernobyl and multiple people, including her art tutor, pack up and leave the area, will Genya’s dream of following in her mother’s footsteps be stopped in its tracks by forces that not even the strong-willed youngster can overcome?

Told with the wry humor of a kid intelligent enough to see through many, but not all, of the things that adults tell her in order to make life ostensibly easier, this is a terrific portrayal of what it was like to grow up Jewish and quietly iconoclastic in Soviet Ukraine. Genya’s battles begin when she fights to be seen as a little girl instead of the boy her mother not so secretly wishes she was, and continue as she grows older and refuses to be anyone but herself. Her struggle for self-determination in a system designed to make her biddable and quiet is compelling, even in seemingly small rebellions like getting the better of her obnoxious cousin Masha.

There’s very little excess sentimentality in Ms Nayberg’s recounting of her childhood here. Her father’s departure is described matter-of-factly, and her complex relationship with the other adults in her life — particularly her mother and grandfather — are seen through a balanced lens that acknowledges that they were doing their best in raising her. The look at life in Kyiv and the rest of the Soviet Union around the time of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster is fascinating, especially in the way that she and other temporary refugees from the area were treated by the inhabitants of the places that they fled to.

I found myself wildly identifying with parts of her artistic schooling, as someone who was enrolled in private lessons out of an abundance of caution for my GCSEs (I think I got a Credit3 for art, when the scale went from A1 for excellence and F9 for failure.) I was also very charmed by her battle to grow her hair out, as well as her affection for her younger brother. Genya is smart and plucky and a terrific role model for any kid determined to be and stand up for themselves, even when that means discipline and self-sacrifice in the short term in order to secure a much better and freer future.

And, ofc, there is the terrific art throughout, which leans cubist but with amazingly textured backgrounds. Even my pdf version of this book felt like a minor piece of art, not something I often say about digital work. Yeah, I know, I’m old school like that, but the vast majority of art is a thousand percent better in real life, even if it’s just a print of a digital original. I can’t imagine how I’ll feel once I finally get my hands on a physical copy of this wonderful book, but I’ll definitely update here once I do!

Chernobyl, Life, And Other Disasters by Yevgenia Nayberg was published April 14 2026 by Neal Porter Books and is available from all good booksellers, including